Highlights of day one

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A quick replay of yesterday’s polling:

 Essential Research has two-party preferred steady at 51-49 to the Coalition, from primary votes of 38% for the Labor (down one), 43% for the Coalition (down one) and 9% for the Greens (steady). The survey finds only 44% saying they will definitely not change their mind, with 30% deeming it unlikely and 21% quite possible. Respondents were also asked to nominate the leader they most trusted on a range of issues, with Tony Abbott holding modest leads on economic management, controlling interests rates and national security and asylum seeker issues, and Kevin Rudd with double-digit leads on education, health, environment and industrial relations. Kevin Rudd was thought too harsh on asylum seekers by 20%, too soft by 24% and about right by 40%, compared with 21%, 20% and 31% for Tony Abbott.

 Morgan has Labor down half a point on the primary vote to 38%, the Coalition up 1.5% to 43%, and the Greens up one to 9.5%. With preferences distributed as per the result at the 2010 election, the Coalition has opened up a 50.5-49.5 lead, reversing the result from last week. On the respondent-allocated preferences measure Morgan uses for its headline figure, the result if 50-50 after Labor led 52-48 in the last poll.

 BludgerTrack, which was formerly updated weekly but will now be brought up to date whenever substantial new data arrives, records no change on two-party preferred from the addition of the two new polls, although the Greens are up on the primary vote at the expense of Labor. However, there’s a fair bit of movement on the state seat projections, with Labor up one in Victoria, Western Australia and Tasmania and down one in Queensland for a net gain of two seats. That leaves two state-level projections at which one might well look askance: a finding of no gains for Labor in Queensland, against three gains for them in Western Australia. Whereas poll results in the weeks after the Rudd takeover had Labor outperforming the national result in Queensland as often as not, I now have five data points over the past fortnight all of which have them below. And while three gains in Western Australia certainly seems hard to credit (for one thing, the model is not adequately accounting for Labor losing the Alannah MacTiernan dividend from 2010 in Canning, which at present is rated a probable Labor gain), all five data points from the past fortnight show Labor improving on the 2010 result  a pretty solid result given how noisy small-sample state-level data tends to be.

 As far as I can tell, Labor and Liberal each had one television ad in business yesterday, and they read from much the same tactical script: both are positive, showcase the leader, and appear tailored to launching the parties’ rather nebulous campaign slogans. Kevin Rudd speaks to us of a new way, Opposition Leader style, while the actual Opposition Leader makes like Luke Skywalker and offers us new hope. The latter effort is a fairly obvious exercise in image softening, but what most stands out for me, having grown accustomed over the years to face of Australia advertising being served with a thick layer of political correctness on top (Qantas being an acknowledged leader in the field), is that all but a very small handful of the 50 or so faces in the ad are white.

UPDATE: ReachTEL has published the results of an automated phone poll of 702 respondents in Kevin Rudd’s electorate of Griffith, and it points to a 4% swing to the Liberal National Party paring his margin back to 4.5%. The primary votes from the poll are 45.6% for Kevin Rudd, 41.0% for LNP candidate Bill Glasson and 8.0% for the Greens.

This still lets Abbott off the hook.
[“The Australian apologises to Ms Ramjan for any suggestion that she lied about those events and acknowledges that the recollection of those events was contested by all participants, who were sincere in what they recalled.”]

The accusation of “liar” is banned in the HOR and Labor Ministers seem reluctant to use it outside Parl.
But on Lateline Cormann was very happy to accuse Penny Wong of lying, even while he was doing just that.

No wonder Lib supporters have such twisted minds. They are led by the twistiest.

Just listened to Joe Hockey on AM. On the whole, he was quite effective (for those of us who can listen to politicians from both sides without filtering what one hears through one’s own bias).

But Hockey showed that he has no credible way of responding to the question of why lower interest rates were a magnificent achievement in 2004 under Howard, but are a disaster now. Sabra Lane lined him up and landed damaging hit after damaging hit. But it was too easy for her: Like shooting at phone boxes.

If the RBA lowers interest rates today, Labor just has to keep turning up the year on the Libs on interest rates. It will destroy Abbott’s pitch that he can take us all back to the Howard era. And, for those of us who know something about economics, it completely undermines the nonsense that we are in a budget crisis and that the solution is a massive fiscal tightening.

2004 wasn’t that long ago, and everyone remembers Howard’s unequivocal promises and then how interest rates rose rapidly between 2004 and 2007. This is a big problem for the Libs. Labor should make them suffer for it.

My son is arranging finance for a house purchase, and was told yesterday by the rep for the lender that they are anticipating a rate cut today. If it transpires, my son is looking at a very attractive interest rate, and his repayments are looking very manageable indeed

Apologies for the graphic early morning quote from the Courier Mail, but QLDs L-NP is the gift which keeps on giving.

Tony Abbott will need to comment, if only to say “it’s a state matter”…

[A STATE MP has been exposed as a serial sexter, sending images to his secret mistress including a picture of his penis plonked in a glass of red wine.

In addition, Ethics Committee chairman and Redlands LNP MP Peter Dowling has confirmed he accepted more than $20,000 in free upgraded flights although he was not required by parliamentary rules to declare them.

He is also accused of taking advantage of parliamentary travel trips to meet his mistress in locations including Perth and New Zealand. The allegations are made in a letter from Mr Dowling’s former lover to Speaker Fiona Simpson.

The Courier-Mail has seen several explicit text messages sent from Mr Dowling’s mobile phone to the woman, including a picture of his penis in a glass of red wine, a self-shot image of his crotch while wearing boxer shorts and a full frontal picture of his genitalia.

“He wanted a Red Wine …,” Mr Dowling said in the text message sent with the image of his penis in the glass. Another image shows a grinning Mr Dowling holding the wine glass in a cheers salute.

It is believed some of the pictures were taken in his parliamentary annex office.]

Tim Colebath:
[the Coalition’s plan to cut industry support risks shutting down a $5 billion-a-year industry to save $500 million. It would dwarf the impact of the carbon tax, which Toyota estimates at $115 per vehicle, not the $400 the Coalition claims. It was a foolish pledge, and one hopes it too will be jettisoned during the campaign.]

OPT thanks for the Qld sexting story. The misuse of taxpayer funded flights to see the mistress is actually far worse to me than the rest, which is merely crass behaviour. He was ethics committee chairman – Campbell sure can pick them.

Is it just me or were there an unusually large number of sexist creeps elected in the LNP landslide in Qld?

I posted above without reading William’s article at the start of the thread: sorry William, I won’t make the mistake of doing you that discourtesy again.

I now see that ER shows that more voters trust Abbott than Rudd to control interest rates. All the more reason that Hockey should never have chosen to muddy the waters on this issue.

If I’d been Hockey, I’d have consistently run the line over the past couple of years of welcoming lower interest rates as being good for working families, and giving the ALP some praise for achieving that, but then expressing some concern that if they keep falling and get too low, it will be a sign that the economy has become sluggish and also a bad thing for retired people living on interest on their savings.

Instead, it’s just been attack, attack, attack in an indiscriminate and rather mindless way. That was fine when the Libs were 10 points ahead in the polls, but it’s causing some problems now the polls are getting closer.

I was writing this post while listening to Fran interviewing Sophie M. Fran struggled to maintain her equanimity while talking to an interviewee whose approach seems to be simply to say the first negative thing to come into their heads. Liberals like Mirabella and Abbott seem to me to be the product of the Whitlam-era mindset of mindless, irrational hatred of Labor of the type that many people feel towards Collingwood Football Club. It’s a juvenile way of thinking which explains things like Abbott having a huge picture of John Kerr proudly displayed on the wall of his Parliament House office at one point (or so I’m told).

It’s what really worries me about the current crop of Liberals. So many of them – Abbott, Hockey, Julie B, Mirabella et al seem to really struggle to behave like grown- ups. Abbott has made huge strides IMO, but he still has occasionsl lapses. Lots of senior Libs seem to have a tendency to lapse into a sort of “na-na-de-na-na” tone of voice. Sometimes I half expect to see one of them poke his or her tongue out at an interviewer. It’s a behavior you also often see from the right-wing commentariat: the likes of that Tim Wilson or Rowan Dean.

Back in the era of Keating-worship, Labor folk could behave in this childish way too. But, on the whole, they seem to have collectively matured. But the right side has deteriorated greatly. Maybe there’s some sort of cosmic balancing factor at work.

If we are heading into an economic slowdown, I wish I had confidence that there was more acknowledgement of the extra effect of global warming (floods, storms, etc) on the future economy.

More confirmation of change here:
[Rising ocean temperatures are rearranging the biological make-up of our oceans, pushing species towards the poles by 7kms every year, as they chase the climates they can survive in, according to new research.

The study, conducted by a working group of scientists from 17 different institutions, gathered data from seven different countries and found the warming oceans are causing marine species to alter their breeding, feeding and migration patterns.

[Consider a hypothetical election in a country we will call Media Land, which consists of the 29 federal parliamentary seats where half of Australia’s 75,000 media professionals lived in 2011.

The Coalition is in government in Media Land with 15 seats; Labor holds 13 and the Greens one.

If Labor were to win Brisbane, however, one of the seats considered likely to go its way, the party would be able to form government with the support of the Greens. If the ALP defeats Adam Bandt in Melbourne, or if it were to retake Bennelong, another seat some believe is in play, it would govern in its own right.

In other words, Kevin Rudd may have a better chance of becoming the notional prime minister of Media Land than he does of winning a mandate from the other 121 seats.

It speaks volumes about Rudd’s fascination with the media. It is an indication of the perils for the Labor Party of believing that the progressive liberal point of view should take precedence over the rest.]

What does Cater think constitutes this progressive liberal point of view that the rest of the country living in those other 121 electorates don’t care about?

These issues may not register as the most important issues for voters, but to dismiss them as mere obsessions of the media chattering classes is ridiculous. If planetary warming is a “prejudice of the Chatter Zone” to quote Nick, why do all parties have policies to abate our carbon emissions?

If same sex marriage is a “prejudice of the Chatter Zone”, why does poll after poll show Australians support marriage equality?

And then there’s this hypothetical election Nick sees Labor winning the election with only 29 seats in the parliament. It’s just crazy stuff from the OO!

A noticeable number of my Liberal acquaintances, particularly men, incline towards the juvenile in matters politic. One even has a ‘ditch the witch’ poster, which he pointed out to me. His (much) better half was angered by its presence.

Generally, they are products of mid level private schools, some of which specialise in snobbery and misguided grandiosity.

There is much more scope for a land species to find little shady niches to beat extra heat, whereas for marine species the water temperature is constant in all areas (except for a few currents etc. Bay species will probably move more slowly because they also may find tiny micro climate niches for some protection

OTOH, Darling Downs, SWQ & N-NSW wheat belts have had unusually good winter – well, summer, autumn & winter – rain. If the weather dries out well for September-early Nov (hopefully before storm season starts) winter grain harvests will be brilliant (though my bumper mandarin crop tastes like water with a squeeze or two of mandarin juice.)

But, though GW might be a factor, areas of Oz in the Monsoon Zone are adjusting to a new cycle of typically Monsoonal wet-weather patterns.

As weather types & Oldies are saying, It’s like 1946-76 when the long Depression-WW2 cycles of low rainfall & severe drought – interspersed with short bouts of cyclones & severe flooding – finally broke with very similar heavy rainfall; until the early 1960s drought heralded the onset of a somewhat drier period with more frequent short droughts.

There’s a great deal more to weather patterns than AGW; as mariners who first landed in the Great South Land & their settler-fleets discovered, often with dire consequences. There’s a somewhat similar pattern of (often killer) weather problems in early colonisation of what’s now the USA’s eastern seaboard.

Excellent work: a put-down almost Austenesque in its gnawing subtlety.

I know a guy who attended one of the “Associated Schools” (that is, “mid-level private schools”: the ones that didn’t gain admission to the elite “GPS” club) and who became a powerful company executive and far more powerful that I’ll ever be who always referred to Julia Gillard as “that witch”. And this is a guy who would, with good cause, describe himself as a “moderate Liberal”.

To be fair, I have heard similar nasty garbage from people on the left: eg, references to “the monkey” or the “puff adder” on PB (although Sophie is truly horrifying in terms of her public behaviour and personal history in a way that transcends her political leanings, so she probably warrants some sort of nasty nickname: but “puff adder” seems a bit too nasty to me).